Jesper Logren, an enterprise architect leading generative AI work at DXC and author of Design or Be Designed, discusses why autonomy changes architecture. He explains how autonomous systems drift, why retrofitting AI fails, and why defining strict boundaries, joined design and governance, and clear agent guardrails are now essential.
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insights INSIGHT
A Maturity Ladder For Agentic Systems
AI maturity spans from ad hoc assistants to multi-agent autonomy.
Jesper defines levels 1–5 and inserts 2.5 (multi-agent without autonomy) to show big deltas when moving to true autonomy.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Specify Agent Decision Rights
Explicitly set authority and decision rights for every agent.
Jesper stresses clarity on which decisions an agent may make to avoid unexpected, high-risk outcomes as autonomy increases.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Use Seven Boundary Dimensions To Contain Agents
Use seven boundary dimensions (goals, scope, risk, semantics, evidence, authority, interfaces) to contain agents.
Jesper gives scope as an example, insisting on explicit interface rules for ERPs/CRMs to avoid leaks.
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This conversation explores why generative AI is not just another automation layer but a shift into autonomy. The key idea is that we cannot retrofit AI into old procedural workflows and expect it to behave. Once autonomy is introduced, systems will drift, show emergent behaviour, and act in ways we did not explicitly script. The real architectural shift is not about controlling every step, but about defining clear boundaries. Instead of telling AI exactly how to do the work, we must define what it cannot do, what it is allowed to touch, what decisions it can make, and what goal it must achieve. Governance and design must be built together from the start, not added later.
Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4aX34GS
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